Snakes, scripture and lack of knowledge

Timber Rattlesnake, photo NPS

I have been delving into some garden beds, as well as the book of Numbers this morning. The Sunday readings for March 10 include Number 21:4-9, “The Brazen Serpent.”

I was reading this in Hebrew this morning. And as I looked over the English of the NRSV, I pondered the role that familiarity with material, craft and industrial skills, and natural history have in reading and praying our way through the terrains of the holy scriptures faithfully and truthfully.

I’d like to look into extant examples of near eastern metal work in bronze or brass, and explore the relationship of art, craft, religion, magic, healing and more. Another day.

Today I noticed that the more recent NRSV plasters over some interesting Hebrew word differences with consistent English word choice.

In Hebrew, ‘fiery serpents’ bite the people and many people die. The serpents are like the inveterate complainers in congregations and other human organizations, always in need of experiencing their reality and power by ‘biting’ other people with complaints, gripes and laments that imply blame or lack. Apply it more largely, and you can see political tactics based on resentment.

Moses prays to God on their behalf when they approach him. God instructs Moses to make a fiery. Not a serpent, not a fiery serpent,… a fiery.

Then it says Moses makes a serpent of bronze. Bronze and serpent are very similar sounding in Hebrew. These little differences could be explained as a poetic speech of one sort, shifting from the phrase fiery serpent to a shorted ‘fiery,’ referring to the whole by a quality or descriptor.

Yet, one wonders, what was it God asked Moses to depict for the people to see and be healed by? Was it a serpent? Was the bronze meant to depict the fiery, indeed even an angelic, seraphic, quality symbolically described as fiery? Or was Moses attempt at what he thought was the healing image bidden by God’s voice, good-hearted as it was, still far from, definitely still not God, not ‘fiery’, not unlike as the golden calves that were not God?

The NRSV indicates little, and brings little improvement to its preceding translation, the RSV. Where the RSV indicated some of these subtle word shifts by its English word choices, NRSV translates every instance of fiery serpent/fiery/bronze serpent as ‘poisonous snake.’ It hides from our awareness, imagination and prayer these differences rendered by the Hebrew authors and editors of this passage. Hebrew scholarship aside, one wonders, based on this word choice whether the translators are adequately acquainted with natural history and terms.

For as many a biologist, outdoors-person, and 9-year-old reptile enthusiast will tell you, snakes are not poisonous…they are venomous.

There is no excuse for this. Especially from people whose job is the relative leisure of scholarship and learning about what differences make a difference. Especially in an age when education that doesn’t turn a fast dollar is deemed valueless. Especially in an age when wild-lands, fertile ground and areas habitable by humans and crawling serpents have shrunk under the pressures of development and climate changes.

The 11th century theologian Hugh of St Victor saw the reading of scripture as the height of knowledge and wisdom, requiring formation and education in what we call the liberal arts, as well as benefiting from solid acquaintance with what he called the mechanical arts, all those fields of knowledge and skill that we might call natural science, technology, agriculture and industry today. All of these help prepare us to read scripture faithfully and truthfully, so as to be shaped and healed by the words and wisdom of God at work in that linguistic terrain.

I think this example from the NRSV illustrates this medieval’s point. To read scripture in our day faithfully and truthfully requires everyday praying people, readers, preachers, exegetes, scholars, and translators to engage a greater acquaintance with the nuance of less-known languages and lands, as well as the tools and terms derived from a more depth practice of living in our various places.

Learn Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Syriac…Deitsch…Classical Chinese…Seneca…Lushootseed…what truths of the terrain of long ago, or margins you missed, of the eternal lands, do these to-some-less-known languages know?

Learn the differences that make a difference as you tread the verge of Jordan, or the woods near you home.

Learn to apply your hands to arts and sciences that heal and ease others in their needs and suffering.

You’ll read scripture better for it, and be shaped more truly by God in the whole process.

North Pacific Rattlesnake, photo NPS